So I'm taking a play-writing class, just for fun. Tonight, the teacher was talking about dialogue, and I asked whether she found a difference between what works well as dialogue on stage vs. what works well on paper, as in novels and short stories. The teacher was attempting to answer, when suddenly one of my classmates jumped in to comment.
"Take 'Brokeback Mountain,'" she said. "The original story is almost exactly the same as the movie. The dialogue is the same. You know, sometimes the book and the movie are really different, but not in this case at all. I saw the movie first, but when I finally read the short story, I couldn't believe it -- it was exactly the same, almost word for word."
I was astounded. I don't think of them as being "exactly the same" at all. Oh, the settings and characters and themes, stuff like that, are the same. But the dialogue?? There are parts that match, of course, but overall they're quite different. And of course the movie has a lot of plot that's not in the story. To me, the two are different enough that for a long time my reactions to the two were really unmatched, and it took me a while to reconcile them.
I wasn't sure what to say. I was glad my classmate is a fan of BBM, and I certainly didn't want to lecture her or publicly correct her. I also didn't want to confess to being a Brokie in this setting, didn't want to reveal that I'd seen the movie 20 times and read the story probably about 12. But I felt like I had to express my views.
So I said, "That's funny! I had exactly the opposite reaction. I feel like they're really pretty different. I have a book with both the short story and the screenplay, and I actually find a lot of differences."
Does that seem tactful? Do you think the story and movie -- particularly the dialogue -- are exactly the same? What would you have done in this situation?